Technology

Samsung phones are about 50% bloatware and 50% bad Android Software nowadays.

Look at the size the 10% bar is in the 40-49 graph. Then the 6% bars in the 50-59 graph. Then look at the size of the 9% bar in the 60-69 graph. And then the Other bar (8%) in the 70+ graph.

Then go backup and look at the LG and Other bars (8% total) in the top graph. Whoever made this graphic is either intentionally misleading or just plain dumb.

Edit: The 78%, 80%, an 85% bars are also all exactly the same size. It just gets worse the longer you look at it.

Young Koreans favor whatever is new and cool from year to year. One year I was there everyone had iDevices, a couple years later it was Samsungs. Trendiness with electronics is a big thing.

I've used samsung for all of my smartphones until my latest (when I switched to oneplus), but it's still an android phone. No way would I switch to ultra-locked-down apple.

There was a time where Samsung flagships had features that iPhone didn't. Samsung slowly stripped their phones of these features.

If you don't need an android platform, and aren't after a foldable, there's a lot less of an argument to be made to be on Samsung these days.

I've had Samsung for around nine years. The thing that kept me married to them was the SD card slot. Now that it's gone, after my Note 10+ stops getting updates, I'll be looking at something else. I have the Samsung watch, buds and tablet but I'm assuming they'll work with a pixle if that's what I land on. I like the Samsung nearby share but that's such a small thing and doesn't keep brand loyalty. Otherwise, what do they offer that say the pixle doesn't?

A bit weird to see LG in the charts (given that they're out of the smartphone industry now) and yet none of the other big manufacturers (Xiaomi, Huawei, Google).

Not much of a surprise, at least to me. Granted, my knowledge of the place is limited, but from what I've heard they really care about symbols of status (Fancy watches, jewelry, and, of course, expensive phones). Add that to the fact that kids nowdays aren't as patriotic (a good thing imo) and care less about local brands and the fact that tech literacy is not great either... Well it puts thing in perspective.

I think I was done with Samsung as a phone brand when the photos app asked me to sign in, rate it and send feedback. So much bloatware.

Probably doesn’t help the perception of high end status.

I’ve dealt with Samsung as the developer of a large app. They will pre-install your app on new phones if you pay them, which I think is pretty seedy. It’s also not very good for the dev because who knows if anyone will ever launch your preinstalled app. Samsung even claimed not to know. So we had no idea what we’d be paying for. Samsung’s Galaxy app store is also a totally laughable mess, far inferior to Google Play and AppStore in functionality. It even has spelling mistakes 😖

However I’ll keep doing business with Samsung. They’re just janky and it’s not surprising that users think they’re just as janky as I do.

Now Huawei…fuck Huawei. They created a big work mess for me by networking their way to a high ranking executive at our company and then telling them our app was “broken on millions of Huawei phones.” They made it sound like a bug in our code. But here’s what it actually was:

Trump banned Huawei from doing business in the US due to their ties to the Chinese Communist Party. This meant Huawei had to stop using some very core Android code libraries, since Google is an American company and couldn’t allow use of those libraries. So Huawei whipped up their own replacements to these libraries, but developers basically need to customize and republish their app specially for Huawei.

So because they got in trouble with Trump, Huawei needed all devs to rewrite their apps for Huawei phones. Instead of being honest about this, they got me in trouble, convincing an executive that something was wrong with our app. They generously offered to meet with our tech team and “help us fix it.”

I met with them, and once I understood what they were doing, I told them to get fucked. Then I wrote up a memo about what happened and let our executive leaders know that we wouldn’t be on Huawei phones ever again, going forward.

Samsung’s not THAT bad. Not even close.

Ouch.. isn’t Samsung based in Korea?? How did they fuck that up

2 months ago I bought a regular samsung galaxy s23 and it's been running great so far. I expected MIUI levels of bloat, but surprisingly it is not that bad.

I had to disable a few samsung apps and for the most part, the phone stays out of my way and lets me do whatever i want.

I wish the s23 lineup gets good custom rom support. Would love to run a lean LineageOS / any AOSP based rom with MicroG on this phone.